I don't know if this is worth posting since it's not like I'm covering new ground or anything, but here's my (lightly edited) response to an atheist on evolution:
You need to clear your head of McClatchie when it comes to evolution. The canard of unproven is false. You need to spend dome time understanding it better. Stop using your conclusion, the Bible, as a test for all else. Stop trying to make ideas fit your preconceived notion of reality in Christian terms fir your comfort...Seriously watch some other videos besides the discovery institute and Ken Ham. Have you ever watched Ken Miller. There us a Ken who us keen of evolution. And he is a Christian.
1. There are different legitimate means to know something is true. Empirical science is neither the sole nor primary method.
2. There are non-religious secular neo-Darwinists who are skeptical about neo-Darwinism (e.g. Denis Noble at Oxford University, James Shapiro at the University of Chicago).
a minority does not a consensus make. ID proponents can also be favorable to ID. Skepticism is a good thing, cynicism is not. The Consensus conclusion is Neo darwinian evolutionary theory is the current best model that explains evolutionary change in speciation. It holds and stands because it is rigorously challenged all the time, and I don’t mean lecture halls and churches, I mean in actual research. This does not mean that it can not be overthrown with a model that explains and makes better predictions. It just means it has not. Biblical or Islamic Creationism has not been able to, ID Creationism has tried but since the Dover Trial I have heard of no new ideas snd the ones proposed back then were dissmissed as inadequate and unsupported. Is there something new beside Bombardier beetles and Bacterial flagellum? I would like to hear it.
1. Yes, I'm familiar with "actual research" in science. I have a scientific background. I've presented at scientific conferences. I've published scientific research at a doctoral level.
2. You're talking about a lot of things I never even brought up. Lots of things irrelevant to what I've said. It just sounds like you're parroting talking points from village atheists rather than interacting with what scholars have said. It's ironic you earlier criticized Ken Ham because your arguments are like Ken Ham's arguments if Ken Ham was a neo-Darwinist.
3. If you think neo-Darwinism amounts to "evolutionary change in speciation" then you're highly ignorant of what neo-Darwinism is. Indeed, even a Young Earth Creationist could agree with that definition! For example, you leave out small-scale random mutations leading to wide-array structural changes in body plans, natural selection as the primary causative agent of adaptive change, and the role of genetic heredity in tracing a universal common ancestor. I'd recommend you read a text like Ernst Mayr's What Evolution Is if you want to know what a world-class neo-Darwinist argues. Mayr was an atheist and a neo-Darwinist. A doyen among evolutionists.
4. At the risk of stating the obvious, truth isn't decided by majority vote or consensus. Ultimately it depends on the scientific evidence, arguments, etc.
5. Sure, there's a lot of science that's settled science, so to speak, but there's a lot of science that's far from settled too. When it comes to neo-Darwinism, there are many fundamentals which even secular scientists who otherwise support neo-Darwinism would question. Neo-Darwinism only looks like a "consensus" to the uninformed layperson, but far from it when you read the academic and related literature. There's plenty of internecine debate even among secular scientists who otherwise support some kind of neo-Darwinistic model. Anyone can read a book like James Shapiro's Evolution: A View from the 21st Century or a paper like Denis Noble's "A theory of biological relativity: no privileged level of causation" and come to their own conclusions.
6. One doesn't have to be a creationist to question neo-Darwinism. The people I've already cited aren't creationsts. They're not religious. They're just secular scientists who dissent from neo-Darwinistic principles.
Edit.
The debate continues. Here's my latest response to the same atheist.
1. You act like Darwinism c. 1859 was frozen in carbonite a la Han Solo.
2. Don't be daft. A theory (e.g. neo-Darwinism) can be mistaken without an alternative theory on the table (e.g. creationism). It's perfectly legitimate to criticize a theory on its own merits and/or demerits. I can criticize the theory that blood is one of the four humors in the human body without proposing that blood consists of red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, serum/plasma, proteins, and so on, organized in ABO blood group and rhesus systems.
3. However, even in Charles Darwin's day, and shortly thereafter, there were various evolutionary theories proposed which were distinct from Darwin's own gradualist theory, theories which exist today but have become more sophisticated and refined, and which still have adherents among non-religious evolutionary scientists. For example, Bateson's discontinuous variation, de Vries' abrupt mutational variation, Goldschmidt's hopeful monsters hypothesis, Mereschkowsky's evolution by symbiogenesis, Stebbins' hybrid speciation or cataclysmic evolution, etc. This isn't to imply I subscribe to any of them. Rather I'm responding to your assumption that there's some kind of a monolithic "consensus" when it comes to neo-Darwinism.
4. Nothing I nor anyone else has said in this thread remotely implies "overturn[ing] all of biology". This reflects your deficiency in basic reading comprehension.
5. Steve already gave you an entire bibliography with plenty of evidence for God and Christianity.
6. In addition, and since you asked, here are some scientific papers published in prestigous academic journals that contravene your scientifically ignorant narrative about the fabled wonders of neo-Darwinism. To my knowledge, none of them are religious. To my knowledge, they're all secular scientists.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23386960
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21135048
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17951329
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23323997
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28277509
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22722833
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19213802
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18036242
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20399826
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18695240
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12360843
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10972124
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17072076
Edit 2.
I can also show you different thinkers over the years that show how the Bible is interpreted wrong. Have you read the Bible? Have you read anything on any other mythology?Have you read, Paine? Have your read Barker? How about Bishop John Shelby Spong? What about Issac Assimov and his guide to the Bible.
Have you read, Victor Stenger, as a scientist you should appreciate him? His "God the Failed Hypothesis" is quite good. It shows how it does not stand up to rigorous scrutiny as a valid hypothesis.
How about Joseph Campbell, are you familiar with is work? Very good stuff, you might learn what the stories in your Bible really mean.
Have you read "The Paradox of God and the science of omniscience", by Clifford Pickover? Very good set of logical problems associated with different conceptions of God.
I can give you several websites Iron Chariots, God does not heal Amputees, Skeptics Annotated Bible, and many more.
None of which made me an Atheist, I was that from 3 years old for sure. The turning point was Santa Clause, I figured that out when I sat on his lap that he was fake. Fake beard, fake Santa. If adults were lying about that, their other claims were probably suspect also. My Mother bought me Bible books and records for read alongs. The Noah Flood Story was pretty horrible to me even then. I went to a few Bible classes, when I asked question they told me not to ask so many questions. Almost as if they did not have an answer themselves. I called bullshit.
My Mother bought me books when I was 12 from Time/Life called the Emergence of Man. I loved them, for once someone was talking about the real world and what they did to find out about it. Limited to snap shots of what was known in about 1974 or so. The clincher was having read mythology, Bulfinch, The Children of Odin, and others that as being under twelve I could convince the librarian to lend me, and then finally the Bible itself. It let me question and see them in the proper light. I saw the Bible for what it was, another mythology of another people. I read history, I read Gilgamesh, what we have of it. Best of all I read better fiction and prose in my Comic book collection and Fantasy Novels like the Incarnations of Immortality. Have you read any of that?
As I got older and the internet came around I watched Guys like William Lane Craig and others, some suggested to me by Jonathan actually. Craig was particularly wordy and seemed not to understand his ideas concerning quantum physics. Later I saw Sean Carroll reveal why. Craig could use the words but his understanding was lacking and reaching, Sean skewered him.
So what evidence convinced you that God was real, nothing I have seen so far has convinced me. I want to know what convinced you. That is all I want. Don't give me a bibliography, I want to honestly know why you believe in a God and why that makes Christianity the real reality.
1. You mention the atheists you've read and apparently most influenced you: Thomas Paine, Dan Barker, Bishop Spong, Isaac Asimov, Joseph Campbell, Victor Stenger, Clifford Pickover, Sean Carroll.
None of them are serious scholars except for maybe Stenger and Carroll. Asimov was early in his career, but he quickly gave that up for writing scifi and popular science works.
Anyway, Stenger and Carroll are only experts in physics. Nothing else.
Stenger's arguments have been handily dealt with by Luke Barnes (PhD, physics, Cambridge).
Carroll's arguments about Christianity reflect a Sunday school level of knowledge at most. And contrary to what you said I thought William Lane Craig won the debate with Sean Carroll.
2. In fact, I've read ANE, Greek, Roman, Norse, and many other mythologies. I've read tons of comic books and fantasy novels. However I came to the completely opposite conclusion you came to: the Bible was nothing like any of these myths.
For example, take CS Lewis' classic essay responding to this line of argument, "Fern seed and elephants". Here's an excerpt:
I have been reading poems, romances, vision-literature, legends, myths all my life. I know what they are like. I know that not one of them is like this [the Gospel of John]. Of this text there are only two possible views. Either this is reportage - though it may no doubt contain errors - pretty close up to the facts; nearly as close as Boswell. Or else, some unknown writer in the second century, without known predecessors, or successors, suddenly anticipated the whole technique of modern, novelistic, realistic narrative. If it is untrue, it must be narrative of that kind. The reader who doesn't see this has simply not learned to read.
Edit 3.
The sad fact is you are admitting you had to read a whole bunch of apologetics works and do a lot mental gymnastics in order say why you believe in a God, and Jesus. The average person should not have to do that.I asked what you meant by Christian, so I can understand your position. I even gave you several other definitions given to me by others. I asked what made you believe. You gave me a bibliography. You did not tell me anything I had heard before, I have read and heard all those arguments before.
What I have not heard is why you believe.
But I am used to be insulted by those calling themselves Christians when someone questions their ideas. Instead of an answer they attack character.
Oh well, wish I could say it has been fun.
1. You keep confusing me (or others) with Steve. You've done this several times in this very thread. You can't even keep track of a handful of people and/or their statements. This really shouldn't be difficult at all because Facebook has our names next to our replies.
2. On the one hand, you demand we offer you arguments and evidence for God. On the other hand, when we give it to you, you dismiss it as "mental gymnastics". As I've already said, this reflects your anti-intellectualism.
3. I've already addressed your statements regarding neo-Darwinism, but you never replied to any of these. In addition, some of your statements reek of scientific ignorance. All this (again) reflects your scientific ignorance.
4. You keep asking Steve why he believes in Christianity. He's already given you answers. Here's more, from a brief two-part series Steve wrote literally titled "Why I Believe":
https://calvindude.org/ebooks/stevehays/Why-I-Believe-1.pdf
https://calvindude.org/ebooks/stevehays/Why-I-Believe-2.pdf
5. Given all this and more, it's no wonder you come across as dim-witted and anti-intellectual. Is it unethical to point this out about you? Based on which ethical system? Based on biblical ethics? No, because the Bible itself points out there are people who are foolish, ignorant, stupid, and so on when it's warranted. Based on atheistic (naturalistic) ethics? No, because atheistic (naturalistic) ethics typically denies moral realism or otherwise can't ground moral realism. That's been acknowledged by many philosophers and ethicists who are also atheists.
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